Monthly readings and dramatizations of stories by the world’s leading writers of suspense chosen from the magazine’s archives. The full range of the genre is represented in these riveting audio renditions, from the drawing-room mystery to urban noir—including police procedurals, private-eye tales, psychological suspense, and locked-room and impossible-crime stories. Visit TheMysteryPlace.com for more stories, book reviews, subscription info, and more.

This month’s podcast takes us back to 1968 and the debut of one of EQMM’s youngest contributors ever, Josh Pachter. At the age of sixteen the budding author and Ellery Queen fan produced this story, which saw print in EQMM's December 1968 issue, in the Department of First Stories. This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of that issue going on sale. In the ensuing years Josh Pachter has produced dozens of other distinguished short stories and collaborative works, as well as crime-fiction translations. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his EQMM debut, a new story featuring the central character of this tale, Ellery Queen Griffen, appears in our current issue, November/December 2018, and the author has recorded for our podcast this reading of “E.Q. Griffen Earns His Name."

Our selection this month is by a writer who debuted in EQMM and has gone on to have work chosen for the yearly Best American Mystery Stories anthology and to appear again in EQMM and other publications, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Here is Chris Muessig reading his story “Bias,” from the July 2009 issue of EQMM.

EQMM’s famous Department of First Stories is the source for this month’s podcast. The debut story, which appears in EQMM’s current issue, takes us into the life of a new writer who enjoys success, but at a cost. Author Nancy Novick, a medical writer, editor, and writing instructor, came to EQMM’s offices to do this recording of her story “How Does He Die This Time?” from the September/October 2018 EQMM.

At the Malice Domestic convention in Bethesda, Maryland, this past spring, EQMM had the pleasure of recording Shelly Dickson Carr, author of the award-winning YA novel “Ripped,” reading a story by her grandfather, the great Golden Age mystery writer John Dickson Carr. The most celebrated master of the “locked room” mystery, John Dickson Carr contributed both fiction and book reviews to EQMM. His April 1950 story “The Gentleman From Paris" was one of the winners of EQMM’s Worldwide Short Story Contests.

A tale from EQMM’s Black Mask department is featured in this month’s podcast. We caught up with Con Lehane, author of two popular mystery series, at this year’s Malice Domestic convention in Bethesda, Maryland, where he did this reading of his September/October 2017 EQMM story “Come Back, Paddy Reilly”—a classic noir tale of a flawed character caught in an unresolvable dilemma.

This month we feature an Ellery Queen pastiche by Dale C. Andrews. The third entry in a series begun on the heels of the Ellery Queen Centenary Symposium at Columbia University in 2005, the story brings an elderly Ellery Queen, still at the height of his deductive powers, out of retirement. The first story in this series earned an EQMM Readers Award scroll and a nomination for the Barry Award. Here is Dale Andrews reading his story “Literally Dead,” from the December 2013 issue of EQMM.

Award-winning financial journalist Larry Light is also the author of three novels, two starring financial reporter Karen Glick. This year he made his EQMM debut with the story he reads for this episode in our podcast series, "Dysperception," from the January/February 2018 issue of EQMM.

Last month a long-awaited anthology of Ellery Queen pastiches and parodies entitled The Misadventures of Ellery Queen was released by Wildside Press. Most of the stories it contains were first published in EQMM. To celebrate the book’s publication we decided to have one of the stories recorded for this podcast series. Here is Darcy Bearman, Dell Magazines’ manager for social-media marketing, reading “The Gilbert and Sullivan Clue” by Jon L. Breen, first published in EQMM September/October 1999.

Canadian author Rob Brunet, a creative-writing instructor and cohost of Noir at the Bar Toronto, joins us in this episode in our podcast series. His evocative short stories, often set in the Kawarthas, have been appearing in EQMM since 2015. Here he is reading his story “Skinny’s Beach,” from the February 2016 issue of EQMM.

Our selection this month is from the work of Jack Fredrickson, creator of the Dek Elstrom private eye series. The author made his fiction debut in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in 2002. We caught up with him at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in Toronto, Canada in 2017, where he read his story “For the Jingle,” from the May 2009 issue of EQMM, for this podcast.